RUMINANT PLEASURES, WRITE THEM DOWN
A CONVERSATION WITH IAN ANDERSON OF JETHRO TULL
Since they made their debut in 1968 (on record anyway), Jethro Tull has produced some of the most creative, influential, successful and brilliant albums in the 1970s, 80s, 90s, through to the 2020s. At the core of the band is Ian Anderson, who writes and produces their unique and ever-changing music. One listen, and you know it is Jethro Tull, but each album over the past 57 years has had its own sound.
“I hope that they all don’t sound alike,” said Ian Anderson, during our recent conversation via Zoom. “But at the same time, there should be some element of continuity that people don’t see individual albums as being so different from each other that they don’t seem credible in terms of being written and performed by the same person or people. So, there has to be some level of continuity, but not necessarily too much. Each album should have their own identity and their own characters, just like the songs on them have their own characters and identities. Even the concept album, having been written under an umbrella of being something conceptual, doesn’t necessarily mean that all the songs have to sound the same or be the same musical style. When you are working with a group of musicians it could be quite easy from song to song they do end up sounding too alike, because the same people playing them have emotional and technical responses with what you gave them to work. As a producer, I have to draw from the elements of the band something just a little bit more individual for each track on the album.”
Anderson is, for the most part, the writer and producer of Jethro Tull. For Anderson, each member brings something to the band. “There are different elements and different ways of playing things. I try to give each member a little bit of friendly guidance. ‘This is how I think I want you to approach this passage of music, maybe just playing relatively few notes. Or even, don’t play at all.’ Silence is a very important part of music.”
CURIOUS RUMINANT ALBUM REVIEW
Jethro Tull have just released their 23rd studio album, and their third album since 2022. The new album, Curious Ruminant, is a brilliant new album with several musical and lyrical themes running through it. “The song didn’t have a title when I wrote it, in fact I recorded it and I thought, ‘what am I going to call this?’ I looked through all the lyrics to find something in the lyrics that would be a suitable title for the song. But I didn’t immediately come up with an idea until what the song is about is about, being curious about different topics, and sitting and thinking about it. So, ‘Curious’ ‘Ruminant’ came into my head, and I thought, ‘that works as a title. It’s not in the lyrics but it is a good title’. And because I am a creature possessed of curiosity and have been since I was a child and I am ruminant, in that I am a contemplative person. I like to think about what I have learned and over days and weeks, I will think of something and gradually absorb it into the context of my own life. So ‘Curious Ruminant’ became a way of creating an umbrella title really for the lyrics on all of the album. I thought, ‘it sums it up quite well’ and just tried to develop the rest of the songs I wrote. “Curious Ruminant” was actually the second set of lyrics I wrote back in late May last year. I thought, right, I am going to carry on in the same general vein and move down that road of giving it a little more of a personal viewpoint, emotional, feeling around a variety of topics.”
The variety of topics includes Anderson looking outward and observing what is happening around the world. And he is not afraid to shy away from expressing himself about situations that impact him. For example, the song “Over Jerusalem”. “Well in the case of “Over Jerusalem”, I touch upon some of the elements of the current conflict, but I am talking, really…what lies behind the song is 5000 years of brutality and the rape of a city and the landscape and I am talking about the much bigger history. I am talking about a city that has significant importance to me and really should have for the entire world as being the centre of the Abrahamic faiths, of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. And as such, it has had an uneasy, relative calm for most of my life, since 1948 when Israel became the Israel we know today. Of course, there have been many examples of terrorism and brutality and all the unpleasantness we see amplified today. But I am not going to make a commentary or take political sides in that matter. I am really talking about the city as a city and my regret and my sadness that it is not a city of peace. Or a city that celebrates the coming together of the Abrahamic faiths. That is what it should be, and in a more optimistic moment, I might hope in 50- or 100-years time, it has become that. Not merely a Mediterranean holiday resort that has a Trump tower on what used to be Gaza. That would be sad.”
Some of the songs date back a few years. One in particular, has a very interesting history, “Drink From The Same Well”. “My son was getting rid of some old technology, and he had an old computer that was one I had bought in 2007 to record some music on. And he was going to smash up the hard disc with a hammer, before he did so he looked to see what was on the computer. He saw that there were some multi track music files. He sent them to me. I listened and when I heard that particular piece, I immediately recollected making it in 2007 with our then keyboard player Andrew Giddings and we had made the demo as an idea for a performance with Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, the Indian classical flautist who plays a bamboo flute. We had some concerts coming up together in India and Dubai and I wrote it as a suggestion how to bring the two flute disciplines, a duet between us. We didn’t do that, we ended up playing a traditional Indian raga at his request, something he was more comfortable with harmonically. The song just lay forgotten, until I heard it, I thought wow, ‘it’s only a demo, but that bamboo flute I played, I played pretty well’ and I would like to be remembered for playing the bamboo flute as well as the concert flute. So, I re-recorded some of the flute and I kept the original keyboards from Andrew Giddings. I added guitars, bass, and drums and wrote lyrics and a vocal melody and I edited it down to 16 minutes, so it contains some of the original elements from the demo. It was the first song I recorded for the album.”
Perhaps, unconventional is the word to use when describing Jethro Tull and Ian Anderson’s methods of writing and recording music. “I don’t have a particular way to work in making music. I try to not have a standardized methodology. It is not a car factory. I don’t start off with different bits at different workstations and assemble it and something rolls out in the end, press a button and hope the engine starts. When you make music, like I do, you never know if it is going to work, but you get a feeling that it is going in the right direction when you have the beginnings of a song. You could have a line, a line of melody or a chord sequence. And I try not to do it the same way every time. I like the idea that songs come from different directions. There is no set way of writing. I listen to the early developments of a song, you know when it is just a little bit of shape, some words and melody and at that point I let the song tell me when it grows up. It is like having a little child, you may be responsible for its conception but ultimately you have to say ‘little guy, what do you want to be when you grow up?’ ‘Oh I want to be an engine driver, I want to be a rocket designer, I want to be an accountant.’ God help me. You have to listen to what that little child tells you. As a record producer I let the song tell me what it wants to be and it is my job to try and help it to grow up and become a finished adult.”
And, although Anderson is currently in a period in his career where he seems to be matching his younger self in releasing new music, he has not forgotten the past. In fact, Jethro Tull has released some of the best box set/archive releases over the past few years, providing bonus tracks, well written essays, and beautiful packaging. That trend, said Anderson, is going to continue in the near future. “Later this year there is the Living In The Past album with additional live material, and of course all the original mixes and alternative stereo mixes, surround sound. These were done by Steven Wilson a couple of years ago, but it had to wait in the queue to be released sufficiently after the new album. After that, currently on the cards, is a reissued version of the Under Wraps album, in which we are replacing the original drums which were primitive, rather annoying drum machines of the era, to improve upon the drum sounds and dynamics that were limited back then. Beyond that, Crest Of The Knave is in discussion, where we will replace some of those tracks of drum machines.”
I think it is safe to say that given the quality of previous box sets, these new releases will be embraced by fans and new fans. The new album, Curious Ruminant, is equally brilliant and will be well received by old and new fans.
Artist Links
